The role of common goods in fostering shared responsibility, linking sustainable social cohesion to the reduction of inequalities

New words are crossing the world creating a sense of a change of age: open source, free software, no copyright, free access to water, food, drugs, knowledge, Internet as fundamental rights of every person. The conflict between proprietary interests and collective interests is not only over scarce resources, like water, whose scarcity is likely to become dramatically worse in the future. At the worldwide level we are witnessing the constant creation of new goods, of knowledge primarily, whose scarcity is not the effect of naturally occurring events but of deliberate policies, and of the improper uses of legal tools as patents and copyright. We are risking a movement similar to what occurred in Seventeen Century England with the 'enclosures' of the common lands that had previously been freely accessible. This artificially-created scarcity, being contrived, threatens to deprive millions of people of extraordinary possibilities for their individual and collective growth, and of political participation. The destiny of old and new common goods is the key stake in a game that impacts on freedom and democracy. Is the spirit of commons becoming one of the main features of our age? Can the growing identification of many peoples with many goods perceived as commons open the path towards commonly shared values, towards a community of values? Another form of ownership is in front of us: what it is happening nowadays is something new, for all. The awareness of the essential role can be played by the common goods perspective is emigrating from the periphery to the core of the legal systems, from a narrow, local to a global dimension.